Adia Victoria has shared new single “Ain’t Killed Me Yet” which is out today across all DSPs via Canvasback. It marks her first new music since the release of her new album A Southern Gothic which was released in the fall.
“Ain’t Killed Me Yet” was written as the blues companion to Lucille Clifton’s poem “Won’t You Celebrate With Me” where she famously writes:
“come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.”
With “Ain’t Killed Me Yet” Adia answers Clifton’s—and so many Black Blueswomen before her–call and challenge to celebrate just because, she says, “we ain’t dead yet.”
“There was little to celebrate in life the Spring of 2020 but living itself,” Victoria said. “With the live music industry shuttered to a close I was forced to find a new way to live. I took a job at Amazon to pay the bills and on the way to the warehouse for a red-eye 10 hour shift I considered my dilemma. Racing through empty streets at 2 am, trying to keep to steps ahead of a virus I couldn’t make sense of, life was lived in barest of immediacy–one breath to the next. That Spring I would end every journal entry with “Life ain’t killed me yet.”
Watch here: